Hilma af Klint. Artist, Researcher, Medium

2013 was an impor­tant year for glob­al art his­to­ry. Voic­es were raised that the ori­gins of abstract art now lie with a female painter — the Swede Hilma af Klint.

Thanks to Iris Müller-West­er­man­n’s years of inten­sive research, the promise of a unique exhi­bi­tion oppor­tu­ni­ty at the Mod­ern Museet by Lars Nitve and the jour­nal­is­tic sup­port of Julia Voss, af Klint is now at the fore­front of Euro­pean abstraction.

After an ini­tial wave of recep­tion, the art-his­tor­i­cal research into Klin­t’s oeu­vre is now being shown in all rooms of the Mod­er­na Museet in Malmø. In terms of con­tent, the cura­tors go into depth: metic­u­lous­ly com­piled series reveal lines of devel­op­ment, draw­ing atten­tion to changes and vari­a­tions. These series are very fine­ly, almost metic­u­lous­ly, worked out and hung. They show more clear­ly than ever that Hilma af Klint was nev­er con­cerned with a sub­ject or even a style: it was always about trans­lat­ing the (super)sensory into form and expres­sion — she saw her­self as a free medium.

The sceno­graph­ic design cre­ates the spa­tial set­ting for the cura­to­r­i­al order, the in-depth cura­to­r­i­al view. She does this in a play­ful, light, cheer­ful and mov­ing way, as is often the atmos­phere in af Klin­t’s works themselves.

“Danc­ing” walls arranged like flower petals and point­ed cab­i­nets form the open spa­tial struc­ture across fold­ed reveals/​edges. This unusu­al form of spa­tial for­ma­tion opens up con­cen­trat­ed pre­sen­ta­tions for the series and groups of works, which at the same time make the work process, the con­ti­nu­ity in Hilma af Klin­t’s work, tan­gi­ble. The move­ment and per­cep­tion of the vis­i­tors enable a new, dif­fer­ent view of the artist’s work.

The basic frame­work of the scenog­ra­phy, which Detlef Weitz and Hans Hage­meis­ter designed togeth­er, aims at an uncon­di­tion­al uni­ty of con­tent and space. Across both floors of the muse­um, high­lights of the work, such as ​“The Ten Great­est” from 1907 or the altar­pieces, are brought into sub­tle atmos­pher­ic changes of light.

On the upper floor, all that is need­ed is a tapered wall to cre­ate an excit­ing space. Here the atmos­phere changes; becomes more mys­ti­cal. The walls are dra­mat­i­cal­ly pre­sent­ed in deep vio­let, you step on black car­pet, linger on black fur­ni­ture to look at the almost sacred-look­ing altar­pieces. A final room in the exhi­bi­tion is ded­i­cat­ed to Hilma af Klin­t’s urge for research, which is high­light­ed using as yet unseen mate­ri­als in a spe­cial­ly designed cor­ner dis­play case. Here the cura­to­r­i­al focus is on the artist’s pre­lim­i­nary stud­ies and reflec­tions. These table ele­ments and the space sur­round­ing them invite the vis­i­tor to do what Iris Müller-West­er­mann did: to dis­cov­er a won­der­ful sen­sa­tion and to devote them­selves to explor­ing the oeu­vre of this unique artist.